03 Saturday Jun 2017
Posted in Reviews
Tags
Ah, Ali Smith… Ali Smith is one of those rare writers that a reader can depend on; you can depend on her stories being just as intimate, funny, witty, and inventive as the ones you read several years ago, without them feeling old or passé, but always fresh.
Public Library is in some ways a collection of love letters to literature, intertwined with interviews of other writers on the importance of public libraries to their local communities. Continue reading
28 Sunday May 2017
Posted in Poetry
Tags
There’s a strange little frame
On the floor of my attic
There’s a black you can’t name
On the floor of my manic
Soul
Let your fingertips feel
The soft poisonous canvas
Turn it slow and reveal
My unenviable atlas
Of sin
The night is young, dear
And so am I
Join me, don’t turn away
The dark is here to stay
Scream, my sweet love, and panic
It’s not another game
But believe, it’s ecstatic
To decide not to tame
The night
You will never know
How it feels to
Die
You will never know
What it’s like to
Lose on your own
In the night
When it all goes dark
Let your fingertips feel
The soft poisonous canvas
Sail on with me, we will
Explore with no compass
The length and breadth of life
And death
In the night
In the night
When it all goes dark
21 Tuesday Mar 2017
Posted in Book Symposion, Essays
“That is not what I meant at all; That is not it, at all.”
– T. S. Eliot, ‘The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock’ (1915)
Eliot’s poems “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” and “The Hollow Men” are different in subject matter, but they both share the thematic framework and tone that one would expect from the author of “The Waste Land.” They can also be read as two sides of the same coin that depicts Eliot’s view of the modern world: the individual perspective, and its societal counterpart. While “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” seems to be a personal account of a dream vision, “The Hollow Men” features a collective voice of individuals who have lost their individuality and identity, and they both coexist in a world that is defined by isolation as a result of a communication breakdown. In both poems, Eliot sets the tone with references to other works, much like in “The Waste Land”, and constructs the voice of each poem based on that tone. In this way, the epigraphs serve to set the poems in their respective literary contexts in the eyes of the reader. In turn, the voice of each poem uses additional references to further explore the themes that dominate them. The main themes of isolation and miscommunication in “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” and “The Hollow Men” are rooted in the voices that Eliot has constructed, and are highlighted by the literary references enriching these voices. Continue reading
18 Saturday Mar 2017
10 Friday Mar 2017
Posted in Short Stories
Most of us knew the main points of the unsettling thing that happened to Sarita Pench within eight hours of it happening to her. Sarita traditionally wasted no time broadcasting her trials and tribulations to the rest of us through social networking, the incident in question definitely falling under the heading of tribulation – not because of what actually happened (uncanny as it was), but because of what Sarita thought had actually happened (fact + fear).
